Marketing Management

MARKETING MANAGEMENT

Question: If you are working in a supermarket, what are the tools / techniques you will use in data collection? How you are going to analyze this data and market inferences? How will you finally apply your market research to improve sales and win over customers?

INTRODUCTION

The systematic gathering, recording and analyzing of data relating to the marketing of goods and services is marketing research. The main aim of this research is to find the answers in such a way that they will be reliable and unbiased. Thus marketing research performs the function of obtaining information that will assist managers in making marketing decisions. The entire marketing strategy of the enterprise is planned by marketing management using marketing research.

The main steps in marketing research are

1. Problem definition

2. Developing the research plan

3. Collection of information

4. Analysis of information

5. Presenting the findings.

Data collection is the most expensive and vulnerable step in Marketing Research. It is a term used to describe a process of preparing and collecting data - for example as part of a process improvement or similar project. The purpose of data collection is to obtain information to keep on record, to make decisions about important issues, to pass information on to others. Primarily, data is collected to provide information regarding a specific topic.

Data collection usually takes place early on in an improvement project, and is often formalized through a data collection plan which often contains the following activity.

1. Pre collection activity – Agree goals, target data, definitions, methods

2. Collection – data collection

3. Present Findings – usually involves some form of sorting analysis and/or presentation.

Prior to any data collection, pre-collection activity is one of the most crucial steps in the process. It is often discovered too late that the value of their interview...